A first time to Cowboy Breakfast

I’ve been in San Antonio for nine years now and have never made the Cowboy Breakfast. Something about braving the cold that early in the morning to stand in long lines for a taco had no appeal to this late riser.

But my folks are in town, and a free breakfast with thousands of others would not be something they’d experience in their hometown of Louisville, Ky.

So, we got up around 4:30 a.m. and got in the car about 10 minutes before 6 — just as the rain started to fall on the Northeast side. I announced before I backed out of the driveway that if it’s raining too hard when we got to the Rim that we’d just grab breakfast somewhere and go home.

But it wasn’t raining at the Rim. There were no long lines of cars, either. Though thousands were already on the scene, we pulled in and parked without a problem and then made the long trek from one end of the parking lot to the end where the tents were set up.

My dad said he wanted a cup of coffee to warm up a bit, so we went in search of that first. Lo and behold, the coffee was available without standing in line. There was no line for Mimi’s Cafe’s sausage rollups or breakfast tacos from Lisa’s Mexican Restaurant. No line for powdered doughnuts. There were two long lines for biscuits, tamales, Rudy’s barbecue and breakfast tacos. We only bothered with one line, but it moved quickly and the wind stayed away so we weren’t cold.

All in all, we had a lot of fun. We saw what we needed to see, tasted what we wanted to taste, and we left when we wanted to leave, about 90 minutes later. The traffic getting out was also not a problem.

I don’t know what the turnout was like compared to previous years. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether the Rim was a poor location. I don’t even care much if some of the food was less great than others. My folks and I had a fine time braving the cold this morning, which is what the Cowboy Breakfast is all about.